using textures effectively

« mojo in all his fuzzy glory signs of natural life »

You want a matured and completed look to your illustration, but there’s something missing. I find this problem in a lot of illustrations created purely in Photoshop, everything still looks too smooth and sterile. Often, adding a simple paper texture layer will do the trick. Natural looking textures bring harmony to finish up your illustration. We’ll look at the texture application in my Tattoo illustration as an example.

Tools:
• Adobe Photoshop (CS or higher)
• Downloaded or scanned old paper texture (high res.)
• Nearly completed illustration

Open your nearly completed illustration in Photoshop. Open your preferred texture file and place it onto your illustration as a new layer.

Oh, you don’t have a texture you want to use? Okay, let’s backtrack for a minute. Here are your options:

• Take high resolution photographs of textures you like
• Scan in (at high res.) flat textures
• Create your own texture in Photoshop (I don’t do this, but it can be done)
• Or the lazy easy fix, search and download (ahhh, the power of Google)

I will make it even easier for you, with some links to start you off right: mayang.com/textures, and texturewarehouse.com. (remember to give credit when required)

Duplicate your newly created texture layer (by dragging it onto the new layer icon in your layers pallet). This second texture layer should be above your original texture layer. Let’s set these properties to Linear Burn at 50%.

Here is the paper I used.

Old Paper Texture

You can mess with the blending properties, you can add more texture layers, feel free to experiment.

The first frame has no textures, the second frame has the one layer of texture at 30%, and the third has the second texture layer at 50%. I am always pleasantly surprised by the huge difference only a simple texture can make.

Texture Process

Related posts:

1. free textures
2. image out of text
3. wood engraving effect
4. glowing magic in photoshop
5. image displacement mask

Tags: art, design, illustration, textures, tutorial

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 20th, 2007 at 5:14 am and is filed under art & design tutorials.